5 Ways to Increase Your Motivation While Learning a Language

Do you know why millions of people today give up learning foreign languages? Reasons vary but the key explanation for most of such failures – students don’t have enough motivation to succeed. People with high motivation can learn even Japanese or Chinese by themselves while people with low motivation spend the entire year but achieve nothing. Don’t think that everyone is born with limited motivation, one can easily develop it to the level he or she needs by using easy techniques and tools.

5 easy techniques to improve your motivation

Set goals which can be attained: Ask yourself why do you want to succeed in learning a foreign language. If your purpose is amazing your friends, there are much easier ways of doing that but if you learn that for entering University, your motivation will be much stronger. As soon as you know your motives, you should develop specific and attainable goals. The goal “I will learn German” is not acceptable, one should set goal in the following way: “I am planning to attain B2 level of German language proficiency in 9 months” Write it over your working desk and look at it every time you open a course book; If you need help, preply.com will find you private tutors.

Enjoy the process, not only its result: Those who set goals are still not motivated enough the same way as people who have to do a job they don’t like. If sportsmen desire reaching the end of their race with a smile, they’d better make the whole road fascinating and funny. Those who enjoy their race reach finish line faster than those who enjoy finish line more;

Don’t make learning vocabulary and grammar a chore: Most students fail to motivate themselves because they consider the whole process of learning a language like something disgusting and painful, most of them never achieve even an intermediate level. If anyone wants to have better proficiency, they should not tell that they have to learn a foreign language but tell that they desire to learn it;

Find your individual way of studying a language: Who’ve ever told you that mastering a language is making grammar exercises and memorizing words and constructions? Methods which worked for ones will not work the same way for others. You alone choose the way how you learn your language so instead of making it mandatory and challenging, why not making it funny and exciting watching comedies on those tongues or using funny linguistic apps?

Find a friend who is a native speaker. Finding a native speaker for practice is not a non-attainable goal with the help of language exchange services and couch surfing. As soon as you find such a friend – keep in touch with him or her, write him or her as often as you can. As you want to make your friendship meaningful – you will have a high motivation to develop your skills faster.

Is self-studying better than lessons with tutors

A lot of young people make the same mistake thinking that they can reach what they want without paying anything and investing their time in lessons with tutors. Why that can be a mistake? Because experienced tutors use the methodology which already helped thousands of students master the foreign tongue. If you start learning it without a method, you risk wasting your time, interest, and motivation. Even the steadiest ones who remain end up with non-native pronunciation and make a lot of mistakes. So, if you want to learn a foreign language, you’d better start with a tutor. Especially, when you learn it for the first time.

If students want to find a tutor to start learning the foreign language, they should not consider the price of an hour as a key indicator. Look at whether these teachers are native or not, how many years they teach, and how many good responses they have. Sometimes it is better to come through lots of tutors to find the one, who corresponds to necessary level of proficiency and your requirements. Also consider whether you like to get lessons remotely (using Skype, for example) or whether you like real-time lessons so as to feel more responsible.

Anyway, even while studying the language with a tutor, you shouldn’t give up practicing by yourself because the more you work on that – the better. Never give up – and even the most difficult languages will be easier for you.